Purpose

The primary purpose of this assessment task is to assist students to develop skills in the use of social media in organisation, recruitment screening and change management theories and models in the analysis of a typical business situation that has organisation change concerns. The assessment task encourages exploration of the effectiveness of the HRM practices in terms of social networking, employee privacy, recruitment and performance management and multi-generational workforces in dynamic environments and how that effectiveness should be evaluated. The secondary purpose of this assignment is to give students the opportunity to enhance their research, analysis, critical thinking and written communications skills including the identification and development of an argument.

Before starting this assessment, please read the marking criteria (at the end of this document) and refer to Academic Learning Centre and CQU Library Help pages for the guidelines regarding writing argumentative essays. The Moodle course website also provides useful information in regard to the development of this assessment task. You should always check the course website for course-specific instructions, which may be updated continuously.

Description

Assessment task 3 requires the writing of an argumentative essay. This essay should be an ‘argumentative/ academic essay’, and must therefore contain an argument that is used as the structuring element of the paper. The assignment is based on a case study that describes the use of social media at workplace, recruitment screening, organisational culture, generational issues, legislation and change management on business activities. Students are expected to engage in extensive research within the academic literature relating to use of social media at workplaces, stakeholder theories, privacy, legislations, resistance to change, organisational leadership and styles of

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change management. Students are expected to engage in extensive research within the academic literature relating to human resource management.

Format of the Essay:

The argumentative essay should include following sections and formatted as mentioned below:

Word count and Format: All academic writing is subject to word limits. A general rule of thumb is 10% above or below the recommended word count in accepted. That means, the argumentative essay should ideally be written within 2700 words. Not all sections of the essay attracts word count. Word count includes words in Abstract, main body or texts and Conclusions. Please check word count for the above mentioned sections before submission.

As a general rule, the following document settings are suitable for most academic reports.

The writing style and layout should be consistent throughout the document. Creating a consistent and professional looking document is not difficult. Failure to do so is an indication that the writer is either careless, or places no importance on the work being undertaken.

Copy Detection Software:

Copy detection software (TurnitIn) is used in this course and work found in contravention of the copying and plagiarism rules will be investigated. Penalties apply in the case of proven instances of copying, plagiarism and academic dishonesty. For more details about the penalty, refer to the marking criteria for each assessment task

Please check the following links to know more about TurnitIn:

http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/viewing-originality-reports

http://turnitin.com/en_us/training/student-training/about-originalitycheck

TurnitIn is only a tool and judgement needs to be used when you view your Originality Report. TurnitIn does not make a judgement as to what is referenced properly, it highlights the non-original material in a piece of work. You should use the similarity score as a guide only and must then check the originality report to determine whether or not changes need to be made to the assignment. You may have unwillingly forgotten to reference a quote or you may need to consider paraphrasing if the amount of quoted material is too high. Before submitting for grading of assignments, you are allowed to submit your assignments as draft in Moodle site (as many time as you want) and wait for TurnitIn to generate a similarity report. Please review the similarity report carefully, check copied or plagiarised sections and rewrite those sections to avoid penalty.

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Different Sections of the Argumentative Essay:
Title page: The title page of an essay should be brief and precise. It contains the following

information: the name of the essay, who prepared the essay, the date the essay was prepared. Most academic essays follows a similar general structure, with FOUR main components:
1. Abstract
2. An introduction,

3. A series of body paragraphs (the number will depend on the complexity of your topic, the information available and the word limit of your essay), and

4. A conclusion.

Abstract (ideally be approx. 100 words): Abstract is a concise summary of your essay and should state the following: the purpose of the assignment, the main areas or aspects covered and the main conclusions or findings. It should be written as continuous text, without headings, numbers or bullet points (dot points). All academic journal articles require authors to write abstracts for their papers, so these can provide useful exemplars on which to model your own writing.

Introduction (ideally be approx. 100 words): The introduction consists of two or three paragraphs in which the aims, structure and methodology of the essay are outlined. It states clearly the purpose or main task of the essay and what the reader can expect to obtain from it. Important background information is included, such as what are the main arguments in the essay. Please include a thesis statement that clearly mentions the main purpose of the essay. The introduction should introduce the essay and include your argument.

Body Paragraphs (ideally be approx. 2300 to 2400 words
): In this section, you should answer all the assignment questions in paragraphs. That means, there should not be any headings or sub headings in this section. Within each paragraph you must refer to (cite) the sources of specific information and ideas that you found during your literature research to support the topic that you are addressing. At the end of your essay, you should prepare a list of all sources (references), arranged alphabetically. If you compile a full record of your sources as you write your essay you will save yourself a lot of time and stress in the final stages of preparation. An academic essay will often contain an argument beginning with a contentious statement, the author will consider different viewpoints before arriving at a conclusion. Please note that all answers to the assessment questions should be based on arguments, answers developed through research findings (references). Please ensure that you have answered all questions and provide similar lengths of answers for all questions. Avoid using bullet points, direct quotes and unnecessary discussion which are not related to the question.

Please note that a paragraph is a series of around five or six sentences that are all related to a single point or idea. Typically a paragraph is about 200–250 words and starts with a topic sentence that
states the main point you are making in that paragraph. The other sentences in the paragraph should all relate to this topic sentence, providing additional: • explanation • evidence and/or • examples. The

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final sentence in each paragraph should sum up the material on that aspect. It is often useful to revisit those final sentences when you write your conclusion.

Conclusion (ideally be approx. 100 words): The conclusion is a brief section (less than a page) in which the writer analyses the significance of the essay’s findings and reiterates the main points of the essay. These findings must derive logically from material presented in the essay. A generalisation is then drawn from the specific findings of the research. New information is not included in the conclusion. Information in a conclusion should not be presented as dot points.

References: A Reference List is a listing of all external resources that were consulted and mentioned during research for the essay, and information from which is directly referred to in the text of the report. It is strongly recommended to avoid secondary referencing in assignments. Such as, try to avoid too many mention of Cited in …….. Ricardo (2005) mentioned that ……. You are supposed to read the references before mentioning in reference list and applied in the essay. There are a number of different styles of referencing used in academic literature. As mentioned before, please use APA referencing style for reference list. Here is the CQUniversity Australia library link to APA referencing style: https://www.cqu.edu.au/?a=14033 The word count of the Reference List does not contribute towards the word count of the report.

Appendices (if needed): An appendix is a section containing large amounts of data or information pertaining to a specific topic that has been collected from an external source. It may have been collected from a reference source during preparation of the essay, or have been generated from experiments or from field work. It may, for instance, be the technical description of a piece of equipment, or the calibration data of a measurement instrument.

CQUniversity Australia has a developed a webpage with generic information on essay and can be found
at https://my.cqu.edu.au/documents/10165/2178077/Great+Guide+to+University+Study+Topic+5+- +Developing+academic+writing+skills/ad106a89-377b-4395-a076-869eb6f6e9ec

Details

The assessment item is based on the case study titled How Social is Your Network (Pg. 548-550, Chapter 15 of textbook): Human Resource Management in Australia (5th Ed., 2014) by Kramar, Bartram, De Cieri, Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, McGraw-Hill Australia). You should read, and carefully analyse, the case and respond to the issues presented at the end of the case study within the context of an argumentative essay. You are required to support your argument with appropriate theoretical discussion and references.

This assignment MUST be a properly constructed academic essay. It should contain an effective introduction, body, and conclusion. The body should present the evidence you have collected to support your argument, and the conclusion should restate your argument, summarise the evidence and make a conclusion regarding your argument. You are required to support your argument with appropriate theoretical discussion and references.

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